PayPal: $3 billion in mobile payments this year

Last autumn, PayPal estimated it’d process $1.5 billion in mobile payments in 2011, and earlier this year it raised that figure to $2 billion.

The Wall Street Journal reports that PayPal has reassessed its forecast once again, and now reckons it’ll process a whopping $3 billion in mobile payments this year.

That figure covers two categories. There are individuals using the app to send money to each other, and also customers using the service to make payments to mobile retailers. In the former case, PayPal only makes money if the transaction is cross-border, while it always takes a fee in the latter.

Lovely lady Laura Chambers, PayPal’s head of mobile, said: “Every week I look at the numbers, I get a sense of surprise,” however she declined to reveal how the $3 billion breaks down in terms of transaction types.

PayPal is a vital service for eBay, and was said to account for almost 40% of the auction site’s first quarter revenue. However, it faces stiff competition from credit card companies and new services such as Google Wallet.